Letter from Cairo.

A Ticket To Suspicion.

December 03, 1999|By Leaving a plane early after Flight 990's tragedy turns into an unnerving drama for the Tribune's Hugh Dellios. Hugh Dellios is the Chicago Tribune Middle East correspondent and recently on assignment in Egypt.

CAIRO — The passengers had just buckled up when the overhead lights went out and the jet engines abruptly started winding down.

In the dark cabin, nervous silence turned to nervous laughter when the next sound was something like a mix of a whirling dentist's drill and a car ignition refusing to turn over.

No doubt I wasn't alone at that moment in second-guessing my decision to fly EgyptAir to Jordan, just as the mystery deepened over why the carrier's Flight 990 plunged into the sea Oct. 31.

But, if I was a little nervous, it didn't compare with how nervous the Egyptians proved to be in the wake of the crash.

Three hours later, after the Amman-bound flight finally took off, I was still in Cairo, unable to leave a small airport office where two security officers suspected me of sabotaging the plane, and I was contemplating a lifetime in an Egyptian prison.

After the engines had been powered down, the captain announced there would be a delay, and the flight attendants quickly served soft drinks. No, one attendant insisted, the problem wasn't with the plane but with the vehicle that pushes it out to the runway.

That explanation lost credibility when the buses pulled up to the aircraft 90 minutes later to take us back to the terminal. On our way down the stair ramp, we could see two mechanics leaning into an open panel on an engine under the wing, their tool box open on the pavement below them.

Told that we soon would reboard, I decided not to. Call me chicken, but I had a real excuse: The delay meant that I would miss my connection in Jordan, so I would either have to spend money on a hotel room in Amman or go back to my apartment in Cairo and fly out in the morning.

So, taking leave of two colleagues, I tried to leave the airport.

Wrong move.

As I approached the X-ray machines, an EgyptAir employee ran after me, waving and yelling that I was about to miss the plane. When I explained I wasn't going to take it, he yelled something about "procedures, procedures" and insisted that I follow him back into the airport.

There we were greeted by a pair of beefy airport employees, who kept glancing at me, checking my documents and asking why I wasn't reboarding the flight.

"You're not scared, are you?" the first guy asked, winking.

Then I was led into the small room between the passenger lounges, where the mood became much more serious. Two uniformed security officials sat there, looking more closely at my documents and exchanging hushed remarks in Arabic that told me they were somehow alarmed.

"This is a security matter," one told me. "Is this all your luggage?"

Then, finally, it occurred to me how my actions must have appeared to them.

Here were two airport officials who, like most of their fellow Egyptians, do not buy for a moment some U.S. investigator's theory that a crew member aboard Flight 990 had purposely crashed that plane. In a land of rampant conspiracy theories, many Egyptians believe it was sabotaged by a foreign agent.

And here was I, a foreigner and an American to boot, one who had boarded their plane and then disembarked, refusing to get back on. In their minds, I'm sure, it was quite possible that I had left a little surprise in the luggage hold.

Then an even worse thought occurred to me: Here was a plane with some kind of mechanical problem. If it goes down en route to Amman, I don't have to guess who will be Egypt's No. 1 suspect.

I imagined myself behind bars, my name splashed in headlines around the globe, reporters camped at my parents' home, people I kind of knew in high school relating dark episodes from my past.

My biggest mistake may have been admitting that the connection I missed in Amman wasn't for another airplane but for a taxi that would have taken me to the border with Israel if we could have made it before midnight.

In many Egyptian minds, Israel is the root of all evil, not to mention devious plots to undermine Egypt. So my connection would make perfect sense in an elaborate conspiracy theory, or in the suspicions of the security officials.

An hour later, I still was sitting on the couch in the little room as one security guard paced back and forth in front of me.

Finally, an hour and a half later, a second man returned and handed back my passport, saying I was free to go. I figured they had checked my bona fides, confirmed that I had all my luggage with me and concluded that I was no terrorist after all.

Wrong once more.

As I hunted down a taxi outside, it occurred to me that I had been their "guest" just long enough for them to have received word that the plane had landed in Amman in one piece.